Technology and American Political Thought: The Hidden Variable and the Coming Crisis

Abstract

Technology does not, at first glance, appear to have been a subject of importance in American political thought. One can peruse the writings of American political thinkers — from lofty philosophers to campaign agitators — and find few references to technology as such, even in the contemporary period. Political writings concentrate on other, apparently more “political” topics — liberty, equality, and justice, states' rights, civil liberties, and the distribution of powers. To argue that technology constitutes a hidden but centrally important variable in American political thought might seem to many to be elevating an esoteric personal interest into a central concern, to be rewriting the history of ideas in order to provide a track on which one's own personal hobbyhorse can be ridden.